


Freeze Frame

by surlybobbies



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Minor Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester, Mutual Pining, Photographer Castiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-16 17:18:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14169747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/surlybobbies/pseuds/surlybobbies
Summary: Dean's got about two minutes before Cas comes back, which is more than mildly inconvenient because Dean's just found out Cas is in love with him.





	Freeze Frame

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the 2018 DeanCas Tropefest Mid-Winter 5k! I'm so glad I've begun participating in fests this year because I've met so many wonderful authors and artists in the fandom. (This is basically a big hint telling you to keep an eye out for a number of fest!fics from me coming out in the next few months!) A big thanks to the mods of the 5k, muse and jojo, who are wonderful and patient and absolute superheroes.
> 
> The trope I'm using here is everyone's good old favorite: mutual pining.

“Just let yourself in, Dean,” Cas says. His voice is tired and staticky through the phone. “I’m sorry about this - a parent called and demanded to see me today.”

“Hey, man, don’t worry about it,” Dean says. One-handed, he pulls his copy of Cas’s apartment key from his wallet. “Just go deal with the parent and get here safe, alright?”

“If I’m not there in an hour, assume Mr. Lee has murdered me because of his daughter’s poor studying habits.”

“I’d avenge your death, Cas,” Dean says, grinning, as he twists Cas’s temperamental door knob. 

There’s a pause, just a millisecond too long. “I know.”

The words register, and Dean stops wrestling with the doorknob, letting his fist drop instead to his thigh. He rests his forehead on the cheap plastic numbers drilled into Cas’s door and shuts his eyes tight. He takes a deep breath and forces himself to say (lightly, as if he’s not slowly dying of unrequited love), “See you soon?”

“Yes, Dean. Make yourself at home.”

They hang up. Dean stays as he is, miserable, in love, and breathing in the paint of Cas’s door until another door behind him clicks open and someone clears his throat.

Dean sighs and straightens. His forehead unsticks from the door numbers. He knows he comes away with its imprint stamped on his face, but he turns around anyway. “Evening, Gabe.”

“Dean,” Gabriel says pleasantly. “Is Castiel not letting you in? Should I call the cops on you?”

Dean holds up the key. It’s shiny, and the edges of the cuts are sharp from lack of use.

Gabriel whistles. “Finally moving in, then? It only took you five years.”

Dean grits his teeth. “Cas is running late - said to let myself in.”

“Ah. Disappointing. Would have liked to see a resolution to the soap opera across the hall.” 

Dean tries not to say it. Really, he does. “Where would you get your entertainment, then?” It’s a dry remark, meant to be scathing, but Gabe just wiggles his eyebrows. 

“The walls are thin.”

“You’re disgusting.”

Gabe looks proud of himself. He nods to the door behind Dean. “Go and let yourself in, then, lover boy. Or were you not done pining?”

“I wasn’t - “ Dean stops himself. “Have a good night, Gabe.”

He sees the man’s grin grow wider but forces himself to turn and let himself into Cas’s apartment. He struggles only for a few seconds with the doorknob. Once inside, he shuts and locks the door with satisfaction. 

Cas’s apartment is tiny but well-kept. There’s one second-hand couch facing a small TV, and a small wooden table pressed up near a window. On the table is an ancient laptop and a pile of teaching books. To Dean’s right is a bathroom and a bedroom and a tiny kitchen that Cas never uses.

Dean drops his wallet and keys on the kitchen counter, then rummages through Cas’s fridge for a beer. Once he has one open and starting to sweat in his hand, he spends a few minutes admiring the new pictures that Cas has displayed on the fridge.

There’s one of Sam’s newborn, giggling at the camera. There’s another of Eileen with Dean - a candid shot. They’re laughing in Sam and Eileen’s new backyard, almost in hysterics, as they watch Sam try to chase down his dog. Eileen is bent over from laughing, Dean wiping his eyes next to her.

He slides the first one out from under the pineapple magnet and flips it around. “Mary Ellen Winchester,” it’s titled, along with the date. The other one, with Eileen and Dean, is titled “Superheroes.”

Dean feels himself flush. He stares at Cas’s loopy handwriting, imagines Cas sitting at his one lone worktable and thinking of a title for the picture - wonders why, of all words, he’d choose that one.

He’ll ask later, he decides. 

If, of course, he can summon up the guts.

There’s not much to do while he waits for Cas. Cas doesn’t have cable, and Dean doesn’t want to start a movie without him. Cas does have a computer, though, for when he has to input grades for his students. Dean could browse the web for a bit, catch up on football or something.

He replaces the pictures on the fridge, uncaps his beer, and takes a long drink as he powers up the laptop. The ancient machine takes its sweet time loading. Dean is halfway through his beer, drumming his fingers on his knee restlessly, when his eyes land on the barest edge of a photograph peeking out from between the books stacked next to the laptop.

When he leans in to take a closer look, he discovers that there are a number of photographs pressed between the books. Curiosity gets the better of him. Dean tugs out the slim edge that he had first seen. 

He snorts when he sees it’s a hideous picture of himself mid-sneeze and immediately figures that this pile of books is Cas’s hiding place for blackmail material. Dean would never have touched a pile of teaching books, so It’s a good idea, he admits with admiration… Too bad Dean has to destroy it all now that he knows it exists.

The laptop blinks into life and prompts Dean for the password, but he ignores it in favor of taking another big, satisfied gulp of beer and tugging each picture out from its hiding place. He’s smug when his suspicions are correct: all of the pictures are of him… though he’s surprised to see that not all of them are of true blackmail quality. 

He frowns at a picture of himself grinning at his phone and wonders how it could ever qualify as embarrassing. He flips it over in the barest of hopes that Cas titled this one, and is almost surprised when, in Cas’s handwriting, there’s one word written in the corner: “Sunlight.”

As far as Dean can tell, the picture was taken inside - looks vaguely like Sam’s apartment before he met Eileen. It also looks like, judging by the lamp casting a halo of light around his head, the photo was taken at night. Dean wrestles with the idea that “sunlight” has something to do with the subject of the photo, but the idea is too absurd to contemplate for too long.

He looks at another one and swallows down a sudden, irrational lump in his throat when he sees that it’s the two of them - Dean and Cas, Cas and Dean - sitting together on the couch that Dean is not five feet away from right now. Their shoulders are pressed up against each other, and it’s obvious that Dean is holding the camera because of the stretch of his arm that takes up a corner of the photo. 

Cas has his head turned down, bashful in front of the camera, but he’s laughing. 

“It doesn’t happen often,” Dean remembers saying, nudging Cas’s shoulder with his as he put the camera down.

“That’s because you’re not funny.”

Dean had grinned and wiggled his eyebrows. “There’s a picture that says otherwise.”

Cas had rolled his eyes. “It never happened.”

“You just don’t want to admit I make you smile.”

“Whatever.”

Dean laughs to himself at the memory as he flips the photo over. It’s titled “Someday” in the same loopy scrawl as the other titles, but unlike the others, the word is underlined twice: a reminder rather than a title.

Someday? Someday what? 

A strange warmth begins to grow in Dean’s chest at the vague, amorphous idea of Cas’s hopeful “someday.” Whatever Cas thinks of “someday,” Dean knows at least two things about it thanks to this picture: 1) that Dean’s going to be in it, and 2) most importantly, that Cas is going to be smiling. 

Maybe, Dean thinks hopefully, those two ideas are related.

He rifles through the other pictures. “Hide & Seek” is a picture that Eileen took of Dean chipmunking a burger, Cas next to him with a concerned, but vaguely fond, look on his face; “No Caffeine Needed” is a picture of Dean asleep (as well as shirtless and hungover) in Cas’s bed after Sam’s bachelor party. Dean has a small pool of drool on Cas’s pillow. He decides to burn that one along with the one of him in mid-sneeze.

He picks up the sneezing one again, just to scowl at it. _Honestly_. One eye is still halfway open, his nostrils are flared, and his front teeth are pushed out above his bottom lip to give the impression of a horse. Forget about burning the photo - might as well burn down Cas’s whole apartment in case there are any other copies of this lying around. He flips it over to see if Cas had titled it something apt like “Idiot.”

Dean nearly bites his tongue when he reads “ ~~My~~ Idiot.” The “my” has been scratched out multiple times, but there’s still the definite spikes of the M and the tail of the Y and Dean suddenly feels like the floor has come away beneath him. He stares. And stares some more. He’s starting to wonder whether this blackmail stash is a blackmail stash at all. Maybe it’s a - 

A what? Dean has no idea what to call it.

Slowly, Dean straightens the pictures in his hands, needing something to do that doesn’t involve screaming hysterically into a pillow. He puts the stack of pictures between a book about differentiated learning and a pamphlet on special needs. Then he gets up from the desk and starts to pace. And pace. And pace.

He paces until the nervous tremor in his hands has calmed down. It’s still there - Dean can feel it like he feels the heat of the blood thrumming in his neck - but if he takes a few deep breaths and concentrates, he can pretend that everything’s normal.

There’s a key in the lock. The temperamental doorknob jiggles. Cas is home.

 _And scratch that_ , because nothing’s normal. Nothing will be normal again. Dean ducks into the bathroom to give himself a few more seconds of peace - a few more seconds to decide what he’s going to do.

A few seconds later, there’s a knock on the bathroom door, then Cas’s voice: “Dean? I’m home. I’ll order the pizza. Can we get mushrooms this time?”

Dean swallows once. Then twice. Finally, “Yeah, sure” comes out of his throat, a pitch higher than he would have liked.

“Are you okay?”

Dean twists the faucet on. “Dandy,” he calls, then dips his head under the spigot. He gets water up his nose, but by the time he comes back up again, he feels a little more clear-headed. Sure, he’s soaking wet, and he’s somehow gotten water down his back, but he can probably face Cas with a little more presence of mind. He borrows a towel and scrubs his face vigorously, then his hair. He hooks it around his neck, then exits his safe haven.

Cas is on the phone with the pizza place, but he looks at Dean in confusion. “Y-yes, a large. Extra cheese, please. Yes. Yes, okay. Thank you.” He hangs up then surveys Dean with a furrowed brow. “You told me you were okay.”

“Just a little warm,” Dean replies.

“...so you decided to shower with your clothes on.”

Dean feels the water sticking his T-shirt to his arms and chest. “Don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it.”

Cas looks down at Dean’s feet and scowls. “You’re dripping on my carpet. Go put on something dry.”

Dean does. When he comes back from Cas’s bedroom, dressed in Cas’s T-shirt and sweatpants, Cas looks at him from his place on the couch. There’s a sudden softness in Cas’s expression that makes Dean feel exposed. “Hi,” Dean says, like Cas hasn’t already been home for 10 minutes.

Cas blinks, looking a little dazed, then suddenly looks away, back at the remote in his hand that never properly works. “Hello,” he says, a little belatedly. “Pizza should be here in half an hour. Want a beer?”

Dean doesn’t answer, just takes two from the fridge and passes one to Cas. He has to remind himself that despite his discovery of those pictures, nothing’s changed. He and Cas are still just friends, even though he’s been desperately in love with Cas for about 80% of the time they’ve known each other… even though it seems like Cas might actually return the sentiment.

He takes a place next to Cas on the couch and watches him struggle with the remote. “This thing never works,” Cas grumbles.

“That’s because everything in this place is ancient,” Dean says. He reaches for the remote and takes it, brushing his fingers along Cas’s wrist. He sees it then, the sudden clench of Cas’s jaw at the contact. Is this the first time that’s happened? Or has Dean just never noticed it?

He smacks the remote control against his palm three times and aims it again at the TV. The TV flickers into life. 

Cas looks adorably confused. “How do you know how to work my appliances better than me?” He takes the remote back and stares at the buttons, his brow furrowing. 

“Because I’m the only one who uses them,” Dean says, leaning back against the arm of the couch so he can watch Cas struggle to start up Netflix. He’s still in his usual white button-down, though he’s rolled up his sleeves and untucked his shirt. His tie is missing. Dean stares at the exposed triangle of skin at Cas’s collar and wonders whether the pictures he found means he could touch his lips to it without Cas reeling back in disgust.

Cas, as if sensing his thoughts, turns his gaze toward him. Dean snaps his head toward the TV.

No. Nothing’s changed, he reminds himself. The pictures are one thing, one clue, one piece of evidence - but that’s not to say that Cas actually has feelings for Dean. 

But what if he does?

“Why - why don’t we skip the movie tonight?” Dean asks.

Cas’s eyebrows rise. “Are you not feeling well?”

“I’m fine,” Dean says, even though it seems like someone else has taken control of his tongue.

After a pause, Cas turns off the TV and sets the remote down, watching Dean with a raised eyebrow as he does so. “What would you like to do instead?” he says slowly.

Dean shrugs. “We could talk.”

Cas narrows his eyes. “You… want to talk,” he says. Dean can hear the incredulity seeping into his tone.

“What?” Dean asks defensively. “I talk all the time.”

“Yes,” Cas concedes. “But you and I - we don’t _talk_.”

“We’re talking right now.”

“But we’re not having a _talk_.”

“Then let’s have a talk, Cas,” Dean says.

“...What should this talk be about?” Cas asks slowly. 

Dean casts about for a topic. “How was the meeting with the parent?”

Cas stares. “Dean,” he says, “You don’t have to pretend you’re interested in my work. We can talk about something else.”

“Hey, I’m interested in your work - “ Dean says, then falters when Cas raises an eyebrow at him. “Okay, yeah, no, I’m not - but I am interested in - you know. You.” 

That came out a lot differently than Dean thought it would. They both stare at each other.

“The - the general you,” Dean says, once his mouth starts cooperating again. He waves his beer in a circle between them. “I care - I want - you know. I want to know about things. About you. The general you.”

Cas has a smirk on his face, the same smirk that he always has when Dean makes a fool of himself, but Dean is struck this time by the softness that he can see hiding just behind the smugness. It’s affection, pure and unadorned, but it’s gone when Dean holds his gaze just a second too long and Cas tears his eyes away.

“I ended up asking the administration to sit in on the meeting,” Cas says. He’s staring at his beer bottle on the coffee table. “Mr. Lee was much more agreeable when he saw them there. I showed him his daughter’s work and gave him a few suggestions about how to help her, and we all parted ways.”

“Are all the parents jackasses or what?” Dean says, trying to laugh off the sudden inexplicable tension between them.

Cas snorts, but the corner of his mouth tugs up. “Sometimes. But I can’t blame them. They love their children, even if - “ 

“Even if what?”

Cas frowns a little, then leans forward to get his beer. He takes a long drink, then says, “Even if they can’t show it in the proper ways.”

“Emotionally-stunted jackasses, then?” Dean tries.

“I don’t think Mr. Lee is emotionally-stunted,” Cas says, completely missing the levity of Dean’s remark. “I think he finds himself in a situation where his love is so overwhelming that he doesn’t know how to handle it without fumbling it.”

Dean swallows, then huffs out a laugh to cover up the pause. “You got a kid somewhere I don’t know about?”

Cas ducks his head and smiles. “I was applying the idea to love in general,” Cas says, and there it is again - that underlying affection hiding in the lines at the corner of his eyes, the upturn of his lips.

“Yeah?” 

And they’re staring at each other in the silence of Cas’s small apartment. Dean’s hands tighten around his bottle when he sees Cas’s eyes dip down to his lips, and he thinks, How long has Cas felt like this? 

Because Dean can’t possibly deny the fact that Cas has feelings for him now. He fidgets a little under the intensity of Cas’s gaze. It seems to break the spell. Cas looks away; the skin at his neck is pink.

“Your pictures,” Dean blurts out.

Cas’s eyes snap back to his; he looks wary. “What about them?”

“The one with me and Eileen.”

The tension in Cas’s posture seems to leave him. He leans back against the arm of the couch again. “‘Superheroes,’ you mean.”

“Yeah, that one. Why’d you title it that?”

Cas shrugs. “You and Eileen have both come from difficult backgrounds, but you’re still able to carry yourselves with confidence and courage.” Then he looks away, out the small window that opens to the alleyway. “And you’re both caring, almost to a fault, and you’d do anything for the people you love.”

Dean nudges Cas’s knee with his leg, stretched out on the couch. “That includes you, you know.”

Cas looks pleased, but he tries to hide it by taking a swig of his beer. When he lowers the bottle, he asks, “Are you satisfied with our ‘talk’ now?” Despite the change in topic, his eyes are gentle. Dean is coming to realize that it’s the way he’s always looked at Dean.

That certainty is the only reason he brings up the next topic: “And the other pictures? The ones between your teaching books?”

Cas’s eyebrows furrow, but then his expression is smooth the next second. “What about them?” he says.

“Why aren’t they displayed?” _Why did you hide them?_

Cas smiles, but it’s a distant one. “Do you want your mid-sneeze face on my fridge?”

“Do you mean the one named ‘My Idiot’?”

Cas’s smile slips and his eyes drop again, this time to stare at the point of contact between their legs. There’s another long pause. Cas’s refrigerator kicks on, and the soft, low whir of the machine is the only backdrop to their silence. Dean concentrates on his breathing, tells himself to count the seconds on the inhale, then to count them on the exhale. Slow, steady. It helps a little, even though there’s a restlessness in his veins that makes him long to get up and start pacing again. But he’s afraid if he moves, if he takes away that one point of contact between him and Cas, that Cas will never touch him again.

Eventually, after a few long minutes, Cas inhales and looks up, lifting his chin almost in defiance. “You knew,” he says. “You’ve known.”

Dean feels his brow furrow. “Known what exactly?” he asks, “That I look like an idiot when I sneeze?”

Cas runs a hand over his mouth, looking away. There’s a pinch between his eyebrows. “Don’t do this, Dean,” he says.

“At the risk of repeating myself,” Dean says, “Don’t do _what_ exactly?”

Cas stands up, brushing off invisible lint off his slacks. “Don’t pretend you don’t know how I feel about you” is all he says, before he walks into the kitchen and starts pulling out a plate and cutlery from the cupboards and drawers. 

Dean stares at the vacant seat in front of him for a few seconds, trying to make sense of Cas’s last sentence. “Pretend - _pretend?_ ” he says, mostly to himself. He scrambles to stand up. “Cas -”

There’s a knock at the door. Dean, still trying to wrap his head around the fact that Cas thought Dean had _known_ about Cas’t feelings and had still done nothing about it, stares at it. Cas pushes past him and opens the door to a young man holding a box of pizza. Cas doesn’t say anything, just takes the box and pushes a bill into the boy’s hand. Then he’s closing the door and pushing past Dean again. “Pizza’s here,” he says unnecessarily. He puts the box on the small dining table, sets a place for one, then walks into his bedroom, shutting the door.

Dean stares at the dining table. Then at the bedroom door. “What the fuck?” he says to the silent room.

He walks to Cas’s door and knocks. “Cas,” he calls, “Come on. At least throw a shoe or something at the door so I know you’re not dead.”

Silence. Then _thump._

Dean sighs. “Thanks,” he says, mostly to the door. He presses his forehead to it, then says, a little louder, “Cas, we have to talk about this eventually.”

Silence.

“Seriously, dude? The silent treatment? What is this, _The Real Housewives?_ ”

More silence, except this one seems just a little more pissed off.

“Would you believe me if I said I didn’t actually know about your - your feelings? Not until I saw those pictures?”

There’s more silence, and Dean is about to beat a retreat back to the couch when he hears a single syllable, right there on the other side of the door, as if Cas is mirroring Dean, his forehead against the door. “No.”

Dean presses even closer, touches his fingers to where he imagines Cas’s face might be. “Cas, you gotta believe me. I didn’t know.” 

Cas’s voice is exasperated when Dean hears it next: “Are you an idiot?”

Dean almost laughs out loud in relief. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

The door opens, and Dean wavers on his feet, but he catches himself on the doorframe and finds Cas looking at him warily.

“Hey,” Dean says, trying for a tentative smile. He steps back so Cas can pass, but Cas stays where he is, clutching the door knob.

“You know now” is all Cas says, his eyebrows furrowed.

“What?”

“You know now,” Cas repeats. “If you really didn’t know about my feelings for you - which is ridiculous because _everybody_ knew - then that doesn’t matter because you know now.” And he stares at Dean, his chin lifted again. Asking Dean a question. _What are you going to do about it?_

Dean blurts out the one thing that comes to his mind: “Gabriel.”

Cas’s eyes narrow. He starts to close the door. 

“Fuck. Wait - “ Dean pushes himself into the bedroom. “That - that came out wrong.”

Cas doesn’t say anything. He turns and walks to the bed before sitting down and staring at Dean expectantly. He waits.

Dean shuts the door behind him and leans against it. “Earlier - before you got here. I was outside, staring at your door, and Gabriel came out and told me to stop pining.”

“Pining,” Cas repeated, looking skeptical.

“I had just gotten off the phone with you.”

Dean watches as the implication sinks in. Cas’s eyebrows furrow. Then, meeting Dean’s eyes, he licks his lips, opens his mouth, then shuts it. There’s a wash of red climbing steadily up his neck. He runs two fingers over his lips. “Dean, what are you trying to tell me?” 

Dean feels buoyed by the alcohol in his veins. In the forefront of his mind is the certainty that Cas has feelings for him and that Dean is about to respond to them. Dean’s life is going to change tonight in a way he’d only ever dreamed, and he couldn’t be more eager. He feels himself walking forward until he’s standing bracketed by Cas’s knees, reaching for Cas’s face, turning it upward to face his. As he leans in to press their foreheads together, all he can see are Cas’s wide blue eyes. “This is what’s going on,” Dean breathes, knocking their noses together. 

After a few seconds, he feels Cas’s hands come up to grip his waist: at first, the touch is tentative, just barely grazing the fabric against Dean’s ribs, but then all of a sudden Cas is fisting handfuls of Dean’s shirt, and he’s squeezing his eyes shut and ducking his head until his forehead is pressed against Dean’s chest instead.

“I don’t believe this is real,” Cas says to the floor, where Dean’s socked feet are between Cas’s. Cas’s hands are gripping Dean’s shirt so tightly Dean knows he’s leaving wrinkles. “I’ve loved you for years and I’ve only ever dreamed of this.”

Dean has one hand running through Cas’s hair as he looks up at the ceiling of Cas’s bedroom, trying to will away the unexpected dampness in his eyes. The paint, a creamy peach color, is peeling at the corners of the room and in a spot almost directly above Cas’s pillow. Dean imagines Cas staring at that same spot in the middle of the night, having just woken up from a dream about this exact moment, wanting to capture the feeling of Dean’s arms around him like he captures his photos, but feeling it slip through his fingers.

“I’m sorry,” Dean says.

Cas just shakes his head against Dean’s torso. The hands gripping Dean’s shirt relax, but they just drag along Dean’s back so that he’s hugging Dean properly, burying his face in Dean’s shirt, breathing in Dean’s scent.

Dean clears his throat. He’s still running his hands in Cas’s hair, and he doubts he’ll ever stop, especially because he can feel the shivers he’s drawing out from Cas’s spine. “I’ve felt the same, you know. For years.” 

The sudden fierce intake of breath against his stomach is the only indication Cas has heard him.

“I’m also getting very concerned that you’re not getting enough oxygen.”

Cas chuckles, and the warmth from his breath spreads through Dean’s veins until he’s smiling, until he feels like he could never stop smiling. He’s grinning from ear to ear when Cas finally draws back and looks up at him. Cas’s face is pink with pleasure, and he’s biting back a smile. 

Dean’s throat is tight, but he manages to return the smile. He touches Cas’s face because he can, and when Cas closes his eyes and sighs at the contact, Dean touches his lower lip with a thumb.

Cas flinches a little. His eyes are wary when they open. “I’m dreaming,” he says, sounding genuinely anguished.

“No,” Dean says, and even he’s startled by the fierceness of his voice. He leans down and kisses Cas, swallowing Cas’s disbelief between his lips. He presses in, hands around Cas’s face. He thrills in the way he can feel Cas’s jaw move as Cas returns his kiss. It makes Dean press all the harder, and when Cas has to break away to pant against Dean’s cheek and works his hands up Dean’s shirt to make up for it, Dean catches sight of the mattress Cas is sitting on, and nothing else makes sense but to push Cas backwards.

 

Dean wakes up with an ache in his bones that he relishes. He knows Cas is awake and watching him, so he takes his time stretching, remembering the way Cas’s eyes had gone wide at the pink skin of Dean’s chest a few hours ago and wanting to draw the same reaction. When he looks over, he’s gratified to see Cas watching him with parted lips and blue eyes blown black.

“Hey,” Dean breathes. The affection in his chest is so overwhelming he can barely get the word out.

Cas blinks once, then twice. “Hello,” he finally says, licking his lips. “I’m sorry. This is usually when the dream ends.”

“This one won’t end,” Dean says quietly, reaching over to touch Cas’s face again. When Cas closes his eyes and lets a smile touch his lips, Dean leans in to press a kiss against his forehead. Behind Cas, on the side table, he catches sight of a familiar item. “Cas, were you taking pictures of me while I slept?”

Cas speaks with his lips against Dean’s collarbone. His fingers are between them, brushing Dean’s bare stomach, driving Dean to distraction. “I wanted to remember the moment,” Cas murmurs.

Dean brushes his mouth over Cas’s brow and sighs when one of Cas’s hands curves around to his back, then dangerously lower. “It’s gonna be a lifetime full of moments like this. You gonna take pictures of all of them?”

“...A lifetime?” Cas’s voice is a hoarse whisper. He pulls back, eyes dancing between Dean’s.

Dean swallows past the emotion welling up in his chest. “Yeah.” He kisses Cas sweetly, then reaches over Cas to grab the camera. He puts it in Cas’s hands. “We can start now.”

Cas’s smile is shaky with emotion. His kiss is chaste, but it lingers. “Later,” he whispers into the charged air between them. He returns the camera to the nightstand. “We have time.”

**Author's Note:**

> According to GDocs, I'm two words shy of 5k. Phew! I could easily have gone on another 1k, but I cut it short. It was a challenge. (Another benefit of fests is that I'm learning to write longer pieces!!)
> 
> [TROPEFEST MASTERPOST](http://deancastropefest.tumblr.com/post/172525447480/title-freeze-frame-author-surlybobbies-katie)
> 
> Also, follow me on tumblr [here](http://surlybobbies.tumblr.com)!


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